gera229, you should not have to use flux, but keeping the tip of the iron clean is important. You can do this with a damp sponge ( most stations come with some sort of sponge receptacle) just wipe off the tip from time to time and re-tin as needed.

Sine this is your first time, I would strongly recommend practicing on a small board first… maybe one of the cheap kits from radio shack. Remember to keep the tip clean, and be quick; you usually don’t want more than 4-5 seconds of heat application. Longer than that and you can sometimes damage components or just burn the pcb.

As far as de-soldering, if you do everything exactly right you won’t need to de-solder, but I find myself having to do it every once in a while. In the past I’ve blown the motor driver chips on the hobbycnc board…those are not fun to replace. It’s probably a good idea to have a solder remover just in case.

gera229, you should not have to use flux, but keeping the tip of the iron clean is important. You can do this with a damp sponge ( most stations come with some sort of sponge receptacle) just wipe off the tip from time to time and re-tin as needed.

Sine this is your first time, I would strongly recommend practicing on a small board first… maybe one of the cheap kits from radio shack. Remember to keep the tip clean, and be quick; you usually don’t want more than 4-5 seconds of heat application. Longer than that and you can sometimes damage components or just burn the pcb.

As far as de-soldering, if you do everything exactly right you won’t need to de-solder, but I find myself having to do it every once in a while. In the past I’ve blown the motor driver chips on the hobbycnc board…those are not fun to replace. It’s probably a good idea to have a solder remover just in case.

gera229, I blew the chips once by accidentally shorting the board while doing some other repairs. I had the board detached from the case and it touched something metal. The HobbyCNC instructions do a pretty good job of warning you about this & other precautions to take, I was just being careless.

gera229, I blew the chips once by accidentally shorting the board while doing some other repairs. I had the board detached from the case and it touched something metal. The HobbyCNC instructions do a pretty good job of warning you about this & other precautions to take, I was just being careless.